“If you agree with me, it must be true”: Social verification creates shared reality and consolidates impressions

A scarcely studied route to shared reality is the social verification of one's impressions, a process that should promote impression consolidation. We tested this prediction across four experiments (N = 1342) using a hiring-decision paradigm. Participants evaluated pairs of similarly qualified applicants based on brief descriptions and portrait photos, made hiring decisions alongside a fictitious partner, and received either verification or no verification of their choices. Impression consolidation was assessed via subsequent speeded trait attributions. We expected stronger consolidation following verification, reflected in greater evaluative choice-consistency (i.e., attributing more positive traits to chosen than unchosen applicants), indexed by signal detection theory's discriminability, as well as increased accessibility (response latencies). Participants also reported experienced shared reality with the partner. Across studies, social verification reliably increased experienced shared reality and choice-consistent discriminability. Accessibility effects, in contrast, were inconsistent and context-dependent. Experiment 3 showed that verification enhanced choice-consistent discriminability only for recruitment-relevant traits. Experiment 4 showed no trait-specific consolidation for explicit, implied, or unrelated profile traits beyond evaluative choice-consistency. Moreover, across studies, experienced shared reality was positively associated with choice-consistent discriminability, but not with accessibility. Together, these findings indicate that social verification selectively consolidates impressions by stabilizing their evaluative structure—particularly on relevant domains—rather than by uniformly enhancing accessibility. Therefore, our results showed that even brief verification from an unfamiliar partner can strengthen shared reality and reinforce impressions primarily through increased evaluative consistency. Implications for impression formation and motivated cognition are discussed.